


A Thousand Lives

by prettyvk



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blind Sherlock, Ficlet Collection, M/M, Policeman John, Potterlock, Prompt Fill, Unilock, Vamplock, Wingfic, Winglock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-30
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-21 09:15:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 3,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1545521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettyvk/pseuds/prettyvk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Collection of short ficlets / drabbles that were answers to prompts on my tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. John doesn't talk about his wings

John doesn’t talk about his wings.

He never did, not even before. It wasn’t that he was ashamed of them or anything; quite the contrary, in fact. He took a quiet pride in them, always kept them clean and neat, not a feather out of place as he bundled them tight under his jumpers, his lab coats, his uniform.

Some people, winged or not, asked to see, and for his friends, the ones he was really close to, the few he trusted, he’d spread his wings wide, simply happy to be allowed to be all of that he was, if only for a moment, in a society that regarded its winged members as freaks.

And then he was shot, and developed an infection, and while the doctors repaired his shoulder and body well enough that nothing remains of those few months other than a scar, they couldn’t do the same for his left wing. The torn feathers grew back, in time, but they were fragile. As for the broken bone and torn cartilage, it never healed right. He couldn’t deploy it anymore, couldn’t spread his wings the way he used to. In the mirror, his reflection was lopsided, as broken as he felt. He stopped looking at himself whenever he had to unbind them for a while. He learned to change the subject when anyone brought it up.

John doesn’t talk about his wings, and that’s okay because that new crazy flatmate of his doesn’t ask, nor does he deduce anything about them. He simply doesn’t mention them, and that’s just fine with John.

It’s only a few days after moving into Baker Street that it dawns on John.

When he met Mycroft, one of the things that annoyed him about the man – other than the kidnapping and cultivated air of mystery – was that his suit was perfectly tailored to accommodate wings, reminding John of his own deformity.

And Mycroft is Sherlock’s brother.

Which means, barring adoption or infidelity matters, Sherlock should have wings, too.

But he doesn’t. There’s no room under his suits to hide an ounce of fat, let alone wings.

Or maybe…

John watches him covertly, over the next few days, seeking anything that might distort the straight line of his back. His great coat would hide even full-size wings, but when he’s down to his shirt, there’s… something there. Two small bumps. Could they be…

“Stumps,” Sherlock says without looking up from his microscope.

John startles, knows he was caught staring. He feels terrible.

“I didn’t mean to be rude,” he offers quietly. “I just—”

“Wondered why I don’t have wings while my brother does,” Sherlock finishes for him, still not looking up even though now he’s scribbling on a notepad. “They were torn off my back while I was living in the streets. There was nothing left for doctors to repair. I trust that satisfies your curiosity so that you’ll stop staring and we won’t need to revisit the subject.”

“Of course, I’m sorry, I didn’t…”

John’s stumbling apology dies on his lips as Sherlock leaves the room then the flat, his coat fluttering behind him.

They haven’t known each other long, but John had this image of Sherlock being unflappable, untouched by insults or anything else thrown at him. It seems he found the soft spot in his armor. And he feels even worse for it because John knows, all too well, how much it hurts to have such a significant part of himself damaged, let alone be stared at, or deemed imperfect because one has wings – or doesn’t anymore.

As hours pass and night falls, he tries to come up with the words to give a proper apology, to say he understands, that he’s in a similar situation, that he knows he was wrong to stare and simply didn’t realize he was doing it.

Words feel useless, though. And Sherlock did say he doesn’t want to talk about it again.

When, late that night, he finally hears steps coming up the staircase, he takes off his jumper and waits, standing in the sitting room, one wing extended, the other curled up, atrophied and ugly.

Sherlock walks in and freezes, two steps in, his eyes wide at first, then narrowing as he shrugs out of his coat and hangs it up without lifting his gaze off John. He finally comes closer, his expression as intense as when he detailed that pink lady. John stands still and lets him walk behind him, where he’ll see the full extent of the damage. With each passing second, John’s heart beats a little faster, his face feels a little warmer.

When Sherlock finally breaks the silence, it’s with nothing John had expected.

“They’re beautiful,” he whispers.

Years later, looking back, John will realize that’s the moment he started falling in love with Sherlock.


	2. Sherlock's fangs itched inside his gums

“You don’t have to.”

John didn’t look up and continued to roll up his sleeve. “I know I don’t have to. I want to. I’m the one who suggested it, wasn’t I?”

Sherlock’s fangs itched inside his gums, demanding to be extended as he took in the smooth expanse of skin on the inside of John’s wrist and forearm. Veins traced a delicate, hypnotic maze of blue lines.

“I can wait,” he said, tearing his eyes off John and taking a few steps away from him. “Molly will be back by tomorrow, and—”

The words died in his throat and he whirled around, his nostrils flaring, taking in the heady scent of blood. John had pressed the tip of a knife to his fingertip; it was nothing more than a prick, but it served its purpose. Sherlock couldn’t hide his hunger, not when he’d bled that much, not when he needed blood to start healing.

Not when it was John standing in front of him, arm now extended, not realizing what he was offering.

“You don’t understand,” Sherlock said, his voice suddenly deeper, the words slurring a little around the fangs. “You don’t understand how dangerous what you’re suggesting is. If I take too much…”

“You won’t,” John said evenly. “I trust you.”

“But—”

“I trust you,” John repeated. His tone softened when he added, “Let me do this for you, Sherlock. Please.”

Sherlock swallowed hard and nodded once. Cradling John’s wrist in his hands like something fragile and precious, he raised it to his mouth, closed his eyes, and bit.


	3. “Detective Inspector, Mr. Holmes. And this is my crime scene.”

It’s not that John doesn’t trust the forensics team but…

All right, so he doesn’t completely trust the forensics team. Anderson is on today, and there’s something about his work that bugs John. His reports look fine at first glance, but on the battlefront John learned to expect better than just ‘fine’. Anything less than perfect can mean the difference between life and death; between having a successful military career and needing to start over from scratch in a different field.

So, without actually saying he doesn’t trust the forensics team, John bags his own samples, sketches the crime scene, takes extensive notes before anyone comes in and disturbs anything – anyone like the tall man now striding in, his ridiculous coat flapping around him.

John has seen him before, usually working Greg’s cases. The difference is, Greg invites him to his crime scenes, but John certainly didn’t call on Sherlock bloody Holmes to come and mess up his case.

“Who let you in?” he asks Holmes’ back as the self-styled ‘consulting detective’ crouches by the body.

Holmes ignores him.

“Who let you in, Mr. Holmes?” John repeats. “I need to know who to give a talking to.”

“Whom,” Holmes mutters. “Not who. And this is not a suicide. The angle—”

“I know it’s not a suicide,” John cuts in, having reached that conclusion himself after a few moments of observation – though not quite as fast as this. “That wasn’t the question I asked you.”

“You know?” Holmes almost sounds shocked. He straightens up and twirls around to face John. His eyes flicker over John, stopping here and there before finally meeting his gaze. “And how did you figure it out, Inspector? With knowledge about guns gained during your time in the army, maybe?”

John’s first instinct is to ask how he knows about the army – but it’s hardly a secret; anyone could have told him. Instead, he says, “Detective Inspector, Mr. Holmes. And this is my crime scene.”

“Then why haven’t you arrested the husband yet?”

John blinks. Then frowns. Then demands an explanation.

By the time Holmes is done reciting facts faster than John can write, John suddenly understands why Greg has such a good closed cases record.

Later, much later, he’ll ask why Sherlock bothered showing up at a crime scene that took him less than a minute to solve. Later, much later, Sherlock will admit he wanted an excuse to talk to John. For now, all he does is offer his hand to Holmes.

“John Watson,” he says. “Pleasure to meet you.”

Holmes grins and shakes his hand.


	4. It breaks her heart

It breaks her heart.

There isn’t a dry eye in the room, and even John is standing, hugging a perplexed Sherlock. It’s an odd speech, but beautiful, too, in its own way. Like Sherlock. And the whole thing breaks Martha’s heart.

She remembers the first time John walked into 221B, and how she teased him about the second bedroom. She remembers, also, the day it stopped being teasing because she could see it was real. Plain as day. Anyone could have seen it, if they only looked. But Sherlock is right. People don’t know how to see.

Not even John.


	5. She's John in miniature

She’s John in miniature.

Well, maybe not exactly. She has her absent mother’s eyes, and in Sherlock’s opinion, that’s unfortunate. But the rest of that bright, chubby, curly-haired little girl is all John.

The way she trails after Sherlock, nodding at all he says, wanting to see all that he does, is all John, too.

And the way Sherlock adores her, goes out of his way to make her smile at him, does even more to hear her laughter, bright like bells, her face radiating happiness… the way he’d set the world ablaze for her… just like for John, too.


	6. I sculpt with my hands, obviously.

“You’re kidding me.”

But no, it’s not a joke, John already knows that. The instructor who asked him to model for this studio hour warned him it would be different. She said there’d only be one student. She didn’t say he’d be wearing a blindfold.

“How are you supposed to draw—”

“Sculpt,” the student – Sherlock, he said his name is – interrupts, gesturing at the block of clay within arm reach. “And I sculpt with my hands, obviously. Hence why I want to know whether seeing with my hands would bring different results. It’s an experiment.”

It still sounds ridiculous, but the thing is, John needs the money rather badly, and if he says no the instructor isn’t likely to give him more opportunities.

“All right,” he says, swallowing a sigh. “But keep your hands above the waist.”

Sherlock – what kind of name is that anyway? – mutters something that sounds like an agreement and John sits, shrugging so that the robe slips off his shoulders, baring him to the waist. Feeling like an idiot, he watches, very tense, as both of Sherlock’s hands rise and easily find his face. He closes his eyes and clenches his jaw as light fingers trace his nose, his lips, his eyelids, his cheeks, his ears. They slide into his hair, follow his hairline, brush against his forehead before retracing it all again.

“Are you—” he starts, but Sherlock clucks his tongue. Above the black strip of fabric covering his eyes, his eyebrows draw into a frown.

“Don’t talk. Don’t move.”

John has a feeling he’d say ‘don’t breathe’, too, if he dared.

Sherlock’s hands are on his neck, now, encircling it almost tightly enough to be uncomfortable. When John swallows, Sherlock’s right thumb follows his Adam’s apple.

“Do that again,” he whispers.

John does, shivering when the touch of that thumb turns to a caress.

If Sherlock notices, he doesn’t say anything. His hands continue their journey down, following the curves of John’s shoulders. John had relaxed in the past few moments, but he tenses again just before Sherlock’s fingers find—

“Oh.”

—the scar on his shoulder. He’d grown used to the idea of showing it to art students, but this… It’s all he can do not to shrug out of Sherlock’s hands as he touches the scar, front and back, with all ten fingers.

“Oh,” he says again, and there’s none of the pity or curiosity in his voice that John expected. Instead, he sounds… awed. “Beautiful,” he whispers, and he seems to be talking to himself. “Simply beautiful.”

And then those soft, strong, clever fingers leave John to settle on the clay. As they mold, press, shape, John catches himself missing them. They return soon enough, leaving muddy prints in their wake.

It takes five more sessions before John finally gets to see the gorgeous color of Sherlock’s eyes – before he realizes that the blindfold is fully unnecessary as Sherlock is blind.

Two sessions after that, John gets to touch, too.


	7. “One would think you’d know my name by now.”

One word. That’s all it takes.

Not even that. A syllable.

One mispronounced syllable, and John’s summoning spell, this spell he’s performed a thousand times without a hitch, goes terribly, horribly awry.

Instead of the familiar demon he meant to summon, something appears in front of him that doesn’t bother trying to look human. Something with a shark’s mouth that opens on an approximation of a smile. A mouth that is filled with row after row of sharp, gleaming teeth. And that’s only the parts John’s mind can label easily. There are limbs, too, a deformed body, too many, too large metallic eyes. And the stench… Decay and sulfur.

Death.

John’s death.

All that because his tongue slipped and a SH sound became a S.

Fear flashes through him, trying to burn everything in its passage. He’s a Healer; he’s seen what demons like this one can do.

He pushes the fear back, refusing to let it control him. He’s not only a Healer. He’s a Soldier, too. He has killed demons before when they escaped the control of the mage who had summoned them. He’s not going to let a slip of the tongue kill him.

Or at least, not without trying to fight back.

Already the demon is pushing against the confines of the summoning circle. John takes a few steps back, gathering his Will to reinforce the circle and perform a banishment spell. The trouble is, he didn’t make the circle very strong in the first place. He never meant to keep the demon he was summoning trapped within it. And so, before he can correct this oversight, the shark-teethed thing springs forward with an already triumphant roar.

John stumbles back, cursing his leg when it refuses to obey the way it should. If he can only reach his desk and the magic rod there…

Even as John’s fingers scramble over the desk, he glances back to see how close the demon is to him. A flash of inky darkness appears in the circle and throws itself at the unwelcome demon. John can only watch, his mouth hanging open, as the demon shrieks and fights back against the folds of nothingness wrapping around its form until it disappears completely, absorbed by what looks like a long, black coat – what John knows is a lot more than that.

When the remaining demon turns to look at him, his eyes are silver, though they quickly return to the blue-gray John is more familiar with.

“Honestly, John,” the demon sighs dramatically. “One would think you’d know my name by now.”

John smiles, then laughs so hard he starts hiccupping, adrenaline crashing through his system and causing his entire body to buzz with excitement. When the folds of not-quite-fabric slip around him and tug him closer, he manages to calm down enough to whisper a, “Yes, Sherlock,” against the demon’s lips before kissing him.


	8. It’s not until their sixth year that John asks

It’s not until their sixth year that John asks. It’s a Hogsmeade weekend, but Sherlock long since tired of the village, and who is John to argue when they have the dorm to themselves? Privacy charms are good and fine, but he prefers to snog his boyfriend without their dorm mates going in and out of the room. Or just lie next to each other and read in between bouts of snogging.

“Remember when we were sorted?” he asks, running his fingers through Sherlock’s hair.

Sherlock doesn’t look up from his book. “Hmm?”

“Why did it take so long for the Sorting Hat to put you in Gryffindor?”

“Oh.” Sherlock does look at John now, with the oddest of half-smiles. “We had an argument. I had to convince it it’d be better if I was in Gryffindor.”

It hadn’t taken long for John to realize that everyone who knew Sherlock had been sure he’d end up in Slytherin or Ravenclaw. He’d been the only one excited they were in the same house.

“Why were you so keen?” he asks, closing Quidditch Through The Ages and resting it on his stomach.

Sherlock gives him The Look, the one that says ‘really, John, are you so blind?’. John hates that look.

“It was obvious you’d be sorted in Gryffindor,” Sherlock says. “So why would I want to be in another house? I’d have spent my time breaking into Gryffindor tower or smuggling you into the dungeons. This was simply more efficient. The Hat agreed with me in the end. It is reasonably intelligent for a charmed object.”

John wants to ask if Sherlock knew, even after only a few hours in the Hogwarts Express, that they’d end up here, like this – but how could he? At eleven, John felt no more attraction for boys than he did for girls. He wants to ask what Sherlock would have done if their tentative friendship, born from sharing a compartment, hadn’t grown any further. In the end, he decides the questions can wait. Kissing Sherlock again, on the other hand, cannot.


	9. Berk

When John comes home from St Mungo, Sherlock is lying on the sofa, waving his wand lazily in front of him and causing words to appear in the air that he rearranges every so often. That’s exactly where John left him eight hours ago, and John could almost believe he hasn’t moved at all except that a few newspapers are spread out on the coffee table. An owl delivered the Daily Prophet early in the morning, but the other three newspapers are muggle ones; Sherlock must have gone out to get those. Unless he performed a summoning charm… but no, he’s not stupid enough to do that again.

“You’re a berk, you know that, right?” John says, shrugging out of his muggle-style jacket. The hospital isn’t far, and he likes to walk home.

Sherlock huffs, though he doesn’t say a word. He continues to flick his wand about, erasing words, drawing lines between ideas. Coming closer, John reads the flickering white letters. Always the same.

_Former Death Eater?_

_Fake suicides_

_Contemporary of Potter?_

_Poison_

_2 Muggles_

_1 Muggle-Born_

_2 Half-Bloods_

_1 Pure Blood_

_Deserted Locations_

There’s more, but the rest is a blur, words shifting and changing to the speed of Sherlock’s thoughts. John knows better than to try to follow that.

“Berk,” he repeats affectionately, and leans down to press a kiss to Sherlock’s forehead. “Just go back to work already. You’re working on it anyway.”

Another huff. This time, it even comes with words. “I resigned, John. And I will not go back. He could have taken any position at the Ministry. He just condescended to be Head of the Aurors Office to give me orders. I won’t give him the satisfaction.”

John sighs. He’s heard Sherlock rant about Mycroft’s new job for three weeks already, and frankly he is tired of it. Just as much as he is tired of Sherlock’s gloomy mood. He knows Sherlock’s theories, knows he could solve the whole thing if he only had access to more information – and knows it won’t be long before Sherlock does something very stupid and very much Not Good to get that information. But maybe John will be able to steer him off that path…

“Two Muggles,” he reads aloud. “So, Scotland Yard is probably on the case, right?”

“Scotland Yard?” Sherlock frowns at him. “What’s that? It was in the paper but they didn’t explain.”

“The Muggle police. Law enforcement. People who are investigating those deaths.”

If Sherlock huffs one more time John is going to Levicorpus his arse out of that bloody sofa.

“Investigating? _Muggles_ investigating? They don’t have a chance—”

“Then go help them. Pretend you’re a… I don’t know. A detective or something. Offer to help.”

Sherlock’s frown deepens a little more, but he does sit up and tilts his head as though considering the idea.

“Why would they want my help?” he asks. “I mean, I could use a Confundus Charm, but—”

“No, no charm,” John cuts in. “You said yourself your brother is bound to be keeping an eye on you. You’ll have to play that one as if you’re just a Muggle. A very bright Muggle who sees things the police don’t.” As an afterthought, he adds, “Think of it as a challenge.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes at him, but he doesn’t huff. Or scoff. A wave of his wand erases the words hovering in the air. Another wave and new words appear; a list, John realizes.

_Muggle attire_

_Travel through London like a Muggle – carb?_

_Muggle currency_

_Identify police yard person in charge_

_Demonstrate abilities_

“I will require your help,” he says a little absently.

John grins. He’s heard it before, many times, back at Hogwarts. He’s even missed it.

“When do we start?”


End file.
